ISOframe Lightbox and ISOframe Fabric used to Stunning Effect at Cloud Expo Asia

I'm not quite sure where to start with this update! Do we start with how this project took 8 months from beginning to end, with us based in Singapore, Datto based in Sydney, and our own Annie Burch even meeting with Datto on her holidays in Sydney to take the brief? Or do we start with how this was such an International collaborative process, with us in Singapore passing on our ideas to Mark Bric's (manufacturers of ISOframe) technicians in Sweden to see if they could produce what we wanted, then the Head Designer in the USA putting the visuals together, and finally with the Guangzhou team helping the Singapore team with the install in Hong Kong?!

Maybe more importantly, it's how we combined the ISOframe Fabric and ISOframe Lightbox systems and customised them to provide Datto with a stunning, reusable display for the VIP Sponsor Lounge at Cloud Expo Asia in Hong Kong earlier this month.

We knew that we had to provide Datto with something special as this was the 1st time they had sponsored the lounge but the brief was a challenging one.. we had to provide a Product Display area, two Demo Areas with at least a 50" screen in each, and a "Datto Story" area to show general information, all within an island stand so everything needed to be double sided. We also needed to ship it to Hong Kong for the 1st show, then ship it back to Singapore for storage until the next show which is Cloud Expo Singapore in October 2018.

We started off with the two Demo Areas as these seemed the easiest to design. We knew that a standard 4-sided ISOframe Fabric structure would work as it ticked the required boxes:

We could go up to 3m high

We could include a storage area with access through an ISOframe Fabric door panel

We could include the 50" screen, as the system can take the weight of a 16kgs screen.

But we needed to bring it alive.. so we made one side from ISOframe Lightbox. The screen needed to face inwards to the invited audience, so the Lightbox was put at the back, facing the aisles and grabbing the attention of delegates as they walked past. The photos below show the end result - looking at the structures, it can be hard to believe that they aren't custom made from wood.. not a single crease in any of the graphics!

Then came the Product Display Unit. We really wanted this to be centre-piece, to really make it stand out. The ISOframe Lightboxes are exactly that, double-sided structures up to a maximum of 2.5m wide x 2.5m high and Datto wanted to use them as much as possible. But they aren't made to show products, just graphics.. so we worked out a way of fixing acrylic shelves in between 3 ISOframe Lightboxes, with each Lightbox being 1m wide x 2.5m high. We joined the Lightboxes together at the top with a customised lightbox section, then created ISOframe Fabric boxes at the bottom to act not only as a stronger counter top, but also a place where we could hide the power bars for the lighting.

The colours of Datto's graphics were ideal for the LIghtboxes, allowing the light to flood out of the panels, creating a truly stunning product display area.

The fourth and final unit was simply an area to tell the Datto story. No LCD screens needed, no storage, no product displays, just graphics and messaging to be displayed as imaginatively as possible. We couldn't just recreate the rectangular structure of the Demo Area, but we were limited by the properties of the ISOframe Fabric structure.. A Tension-Fabric structure of this type can't be curved for example. So although we used the rectangular structure as a starting point, we looked at what else we could do with it, and this is where our colleagues in Sweden came in, helping us to cut the ISOframe Fabric structure to new angles instead of the usual 90 degree corners and we added this angled section to one side.

We again used the ISOframe Lightbox at the front and Datto's graphic design really helped the image to stand out - by using a dark, flat colour as the background, this really made the lighter country images come to life.

As the rear of the structure went up to 3.27m tall, this gave plenty of room to tell the Datto story.

After 8 months, it was fantastic to finally see the stand come to life! Having pre-built the entire stand in Sweden, shipping it to Singapore where we familiarised ourselves with it, so that we weren't seeing it for the first time on site, it was duly packed on a boat for Hong Kong, where 4 of us went to install the stand. Using 2 of our colleagues from Mark Bric's Guangzhou office, the stand was set up easily, quickly, using only allen keys where necessary.. one of our least-stressful installations!

Most importantly, we ended up with a very happy client who was delighted with how the stand turned out. Now it's currently on a boat on it's way back from Hong Kong, ready to go into storage until we do it all again in Singapore in October!